


you were ten and remembered ten winters

by anonissue



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Concussions, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 00:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13135464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonissue/pseuds/anonissue
Summary: “It’s OK for you to find this difficult,” she adds after a minute. “Just so you hear someone say it.”“I’d prefer if people kept telling me to find it easy,” Matt manages.----Matt made it most of his life and professional career without needing a guide, going back to playing without one shouldn't be that damn complicated. And it maybe it wouldn't be, if Marc-Andre's presence in his life had only ever been that single-faceted.





	you were ten and remembered ten winters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Capbuckyang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capbuckyang/gifts).



> These two drive me crazy. I spent too long mulling over how to tell all the stories about these two that your prompt letter and their situation inspired, and then then settled on just figuring out how to tell this one -- have a happy holidays! I hope there's something here for you to enjoy.
> 
> Title from the poem "these thoughts against the pulse, like music" by vrai
> 
> Excerpt of text from de Saint-Exupéry's "Le Petit Prince." English translation of the passage used can be found [here](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/266628-please-tame-me-he-said-i-want-to-very-much-the).
> 
> Content warnings, if any, are in the notes at the end.

“It’s expected there’ll be some hiccups. Nobody thinks it’ll be a flawless transition, just to be clear -- that would be unrealistic and frankly an unfair burden to put on either of you.”

“Uh-huh,” Matt intones, well-aware he’s not paying the kind of attention expected of him, but everything about this conversation is pissing him off.

He rubs over the callouses on his left palm, picking at the malformed circles of dead skin that decorate the points along his palm where fingers meet body. He’s beed told he and Marc-Andre are being counseled seperately on this, which makes no goddamn sense at all if you ask Matt -- but neither do the ethics of exposing the man to the expansion draft, so clearly nobody in a position to make decisions about either of their careers gives two goddamns about Matt’s opinions on the matter.

“You’ve read the literature we’ve provided for you?” Matt tunes back in to hear, and he blinks, really looking at the man across from him for the first time.

Matt doesn’t know him -- he’s not part of the regular Penguins medical staff, not the broken bones and bumps on the head contingent or the hyper and extrasensory contingent. He looks decidedly uncomfortable, though. Out of his element and stuck in an ill-fitting suit, the grimace on the guy’s face is more-or-less unsurprising, Matt supposes, even if walking sentinels through the side-effects of bond termination is what Dr. Mansell? Mansour? Manning? Usually spends his Tuesday mornings doing.

“Yeah,” Matt snorts. “I read the three page pamphlet. Apparently I can expect the process to include --” Matt leans back in his chair and lifts his hands in an aborted gesture that started its life as aggressive air-quotes. “-- mild to moderate physical discomfort for the first three to nine weeks, and side effects that range from fatigue to spontaneous aneurysms, so either it’ll be like having a cold, or I’ll die. Which clarifies absolutely nothing, by the way, you might want to suggest they rewrite that part.”

“Aneurysms are extremely rare, Mr. Murray, only three point --”

“-- seven-nine percent of pairs going through this experience them, and it’s usually the guide when it does happen, I know,” Matt grits out. “I read the fucking pamphlet. You seem to be missing my point.”

The doctor opens his mouth and squares his shoulders, seemingly intent to continue bulldozing through this briefing with as little actual conversation as possible, but pauses -- eyes catching Matt’s and getting stuck. He blinks, and then sags. Takes off his glasses, fiddles with the stems -- folding and unfolding them in no particular rhythm or pattern, the series of soft plastic clicks tugging at the periphery of Matt’s attention.

“Matt, this happens all the time without problems,” he explains, looking up carefully, a measured slowness to his words that doesn’t sound practiced or placating. “Bonds happen spontaneously; there are documented freak instances of guides bonding with sentinels after working together for only about 24 hours. Most of the concern here is that your work not suffer unduly. Your senses staying at relative baseline is so vital to what you do, and they won’t during this. So this whole process is something the organization wants to make sure happens as seamlessly as possible.”

Which Matt understands to mean as quickly as possible. Missing as few games as physically possible. The knowledge that his well-being is a commodity isn’t even something Matt has much bitterness towards, life’s been that way since the J -- but it’s never been about something this personal before.

He thinks of Marc-Andre’s smile on the stage at the expansion draft not seventy-two hours ago. His absence in this room -- and in the corners of Matt’s mind that tend to be quieter, warmer than most -- produces an almost physical ache, like waking up and knowing it’s just a matter of time before a headache sets in. Matt can feel himself grimace, knows it’s not a good look on him, even as he can feel the need to make this conversation difficult start to drain away from him.

Hockey is a business, after all.

\--

“What are you the most upset about?”

“How do you mean?” Matt asks absently, most of his attention on the work of placing socks into piles to be sorted off into pairs in a few minutes.

All that’s left in the laundry hamper he’s working through are the odds and ends -- the small underwear (mostly Christina’s), the socks, the more compact linens like dusting cloths and hand-towels. There’s something calming about letting his hands work with the clothes, but actually the appeal of the chore lies in the soothing speed of sorting items by visual queues; it’s mindless in a way that doesn’t set off his visual acuity triggers which is so genuinely pleasant for him since he’s always had the most trouble with his eyesight. Not that Christina doesn’t know how to handle him during a zone-out -- Matt just doesn’t enjoy putting her through them since he made them miss almost all of homecoming senior year after getting stuck on the way the tulle of her dress crackled where her thighs rubbed together sitting at their table in the catering hall.

She looks up from where she’s going through their accounting on the large kitchen table, spread out at the far end with glitter gel pens and stickers and a relentlessly elaborate indexing system that’s as thorough as it is aggressively cute. The table is huge, and there’s plenty of room for Matt’s laundry piles. He doesn’t actually have to make eye-contact with her to know she’s looking at him. The weight of her gaze isn’t actually metaphorical, the trajectory of her breathing changes as she looks up and the part of him that always relentlessly keeps track of where she is in the room with him sparks goosebumps along his skin as the ghost of her breath tickles the hair on his arms. Matt takes a minute to swallow carefully, focus on the feel of still-warm cotton between his fingers, and tries not to be too obvious about rubbing circles into the fabric of a faded pink pair of boyshorts with his thumb until he’s got enough control of his body back to feel comfortable, to feel like he’s not running any sort of risk just by being near Christina. He knows he’s blushing, and it’s mostly because he feels like an asshole -- it’s been almost twelve months since he’s had to face the anxiety of losing himself in his own house.

“How much of it is the fact that Marc was your first guide?” Her voice almost makes Matt jump. “Versus the professional anxiety of having to separate at all, versus, like, the totally acceptable and human fact that you’re sad he’s leaving?”

“I’m not that sad he’s leaving,” Matt murmurs, shrugging.

“Matt, babe,” Christina sighs, almost sounding disappointed.

“I’m not,” he insists, although he keeps working through the clothes like saying it a second time will convince Christina to just drop it.

“It does nobody any damn good to pretend like you don’t care about him,” she says, and Matt feels the same agitation from earlier at the doctor’s office slide through him like a knife.

“I didn’t say I don’t care about him, I just don’t like how everyone assumes I won’t be able to play hockey without him,” Matt snaps, finally abandoning the clothes. “Jesus.”

“Has anyone said that?” Christina asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Not directly, but the implication in how careful everyone is being is almost smothering me -- you, right now,” Matt says. “The team, and the mandated off-season consult with the doctor today, shit on Twitter, the interviews, my goddamn teammates -- just. If this is all a totally normal and supposedly uncomplicated process, could we maybe stop fucking talking about it and just let it happen?”

Christina makes a very unimpressed face and holds his gaze for a minute longer before returning to balancing what looks like the newest batch of incoming fundraiser cheques.

“It’s OK for you to find this difficult,” she adds after a minute. “Just so you hear someone say it.”

Matt has to battle the urge he has to go over to her and lay his head down in her lap. They’ll be here for a while if he does that, and he’s wanted to go outside ever since the air blowing in from the window above the sink started to promise rain.  
“I’d prefer if people kept telling me to find it easy,” Matt manages.

“I’ll bet,” Christina replies, dryly. “What did you want did you want to for dinner?”

“Sushi,” Matt replies immediately, unbothered by the change in topic. He wants the smells -- salt and sour of pickles, the soft pervasive slightly metallic bubble of rice as it gets sticky and clings to everything, the heavy lambast of bitter brine and sweetness that comes with oily fish as it gets cut behind the counter, which almost seems endlessly overwhelming when eating it. “But maybe we should go out to eat? I could use some time out of the house.”

“Yeah,” Christina says. “Yeah, OK, just give me a second --”

And Matt’s with her in that moment, doing well considering the conversation they’ve just had and how the day’s been going generally, when his phone begins to vibrate.

It’s in his back pocket -- he’s wearing sweatpants, lightweight ones that have become ratty with use and age, so the sensation of the buzzing phone is stronger than it would be otherwise, but --

The humming fluttering of the phone on fabric on skin blossoms outward from where the source is slung high up on his hamstring under the jut of his hip, and he can feel it all the way down into his toes. He spends the next ring on the way it runs up the other direction instead, following the pathway of muscle and tendons to the base of his spine -- vertebra to vertebra, each notch a little less rattled as skin and bone and cartilage insulate as they’re supposed to. Matt wonders if he can figure out the frequency of the vibration purely from the derivative sensation, fascinated by how if he concentrates, he can actually feel the movement of the phone in his fingertips, but it’s _hard_ to, it’s --

\-- there’s something else, there’s -- someone’s holding his hand? Someone’s _squeezing_ his hand between the space of skin between his thumb and forefinger and that’s a goddamn pressure point and it hurts, what --

“-- the _hell_ Christina,” Matt gasps, trying to pull his hand away.

As soon as the words exit his mouth, she stops, switching to soothing, apologetic rubbing motions over the topography of his skin. Her face is right there, right in front of his, and Matt can’t remember her getting up, can’t remember her moving, and that’s when he realizes what this is.

“Shit,” he says. And again: “Shit,” because once wasn’t fucking enough.

“It’s fine, it’s OK. It wasn’t that long,” she says. “You put your phone on vibrate instead of silent.”

 _You’re usually way more careful with that_ she doesn’t say, and Matt doesn’t need her to, because he can hear the concern in her voice. He’d had a reason, he’s sure -- the consult with the magic doc downtown earlier today, Matt had wanted to know if someone called, too polite to leave the phone on ring. He should’ve known better than that, should’ve known he’d be too distracted after to switch it back. He can’t remember who’s call he’d been nervous about missing, it’s almost more irritating than forgetting to turn the ringer itself back on.

“I’m sorry,” he manages.

“Don’t be,” Christina replies immediately, still not letting go of his hands.

The touch helps, even if he’s so embarrassed he feels like his face is on fire. The way she smells this close -- the perfume almost gone that she sprayed in her hair, the keratin oil she uses, the mild sweetness of the unscented brazil nut moisturizer on her skin -- it’s not overwhelming the way the phone was, it’s grounding. Her ability to keep him in the present is something he could learn to love her for if he wasn’t already so completely enamored by every other part of her.

It’s a thought that brings to mind Marc-Andre again; if the zone-out alone weren’t enough, Matt feels so bizarrely, acutely guilty he almost pushes Christina away from him.

“Hey,” he gets out, almost sounding normal. “I could really do with that fresh air, eh? You good to go to dinner still?”

“Are you?” she asks, a little startled.

“Yeah,” Matt says, nosing into her hair. “Yeah, the sooner the better.”

 

\---

Instead of texting or calling Marc-Andre, Matt waits.

He -- look, he knows he shouldn’t, he should be the first to reach out about this, he’s not stupid, but Matt can’t quite bring himself to go beyond staring at the blinking cursor of his messenger prompt every time he pulls up Marc-Andre’s contact information. It’s not fair, it’s definitely not brave, and like watching a dirty wound start to fester because the bright flash of pain it would take to clean the damn thing seems to present and overwhelming, Matt knows he’s not making the right decision.

He hasn’t really slipped up since the night after his intake separation therapy session, and frankly, Matt knows that had little to do with Marc-Andre not being physically present so much as it did with frank emotional compromise. Matt’s actually very good at not getting upset. So far, so long as he does what he’s good at, he’s been fine.

That lasts until the day before the end of prospect camp, where honestly most of his time on the ice is more as a passive reality check for the rookies. Sid was here earlier in the week to the same (and far greater) effect, and even now as Tanger glares at the defensemen who all have eyes as big as saucers while Dumo tries hard to keep a straight face, Matt knows he’s not the central focus of anything being done here this week.

He thinks that’s enough to maybe hide the fact that he’s been playing cautiously.

“Hey, come here a minute,” Mike half-shouts from where he’s setting up cones in front of the goal.

He pauses long enough for Matt to make contact and raises his eyebrows in a _yeah, you_ that has Matt popping up from where he’s got one leg laid out on the bench and sliding his mask on as he skates over.

“Sorry, I thought they were doing a dry run first -- “

“Nah,” Mike interrupts, spacing the cones with his feet. “They are. Not why I called you over.”

Matt blinks, circles back around to stop in front Mike, who looks down the ice before fiddling with the cones some more. Matt waits him out.

“This shit with Fleury,” Mike starts abruptly, looking up from the ice. “It’s none of my business so long’s it doesn’t fuck up yours. And your business is goaltending, I know you know that.”

“Yeah, coach,” Matt says.

“So either you’re under the impression you can half-ass your reaction times and start your angle tracking well after the offense penetrates the blue line because these kids haven’t played anything faster than a major juniors game,” Mike continues, scratching at his chin. “Or your business is looking to become my business pretty rapidly.”

Matt runs his tongue over his teeth and looks over to where all the rookies are on a knee, Kris still yelling at them. He remembers being that wide-eyed himself, wanting to do everything he could to prove he wouldn’t make things worse, and for a moment he has a hard time believing that was only four years ago.

“I’ll step up my speed,” is what Matt says, eventually.

“Yeah, ok,” Mike nods. “You do that.”

\---

Matt strips down to just his leg pads and compression gear, and there should be holes in his phone protector from the way he’s been staring at it since he hit the locker room.

Shears gives him some serious side-eye, but when Matt catches him and Mike’s look softens into something closer to a question, Matt just shakes his head.

“I’m fine,” he adds, when Shears looks like he’s actually about to say something.

“You talked to him?” Conor continues, not taking the hint.

Matt tells himself that grinding his teeth as a distraction won’t necessarily work in his favor, too abruptly loud, too much input, so he instead modulates his breathing and forces himself to maintain eye-contact.

“Who?” Matt asks flatly.

“Dude,” Conor rolls his eyes. “Fucking stop with that shit.”

“Conor,” Matt continues in the same tone of voice. “If I wanted to talk about it, I’d have come to you to talk about it. Seeing as I definitely haven’t done that --”

“Shut up asshole,” Conor interrupts, his tone note _quite_ fond, but not angry despite the admonishment. “Text him.”

“I will,” Matt says.

“No, like -- now,” Conor clarifies, turning to sit on the bench, leaning on the side of his cubby. “I can wait. Jordan’s out with her sister anyway, so I can stay all night if that’s what it takes for you to stop avoiding this bullshit.”

“You don’t have to be so dramatic,” Matt says, irritated.

He doesn’t enjoy Conor thinking he can just decide to tell Matt what the fuck to do, friendship or otherwise, but it’s a lot harder to not use his friends’ insistence as a knife to cut through whatever resistance has been stopping him from doing this himself. His eyes track back to his phone again, and with a sigh, Matt slides it off the shelf, and collapses down on the bench himself. _What do I say?_ he wants to ask Conor, but how would Conor know? He’s not -- he’s never had a guide.  
He opens his messenger app, and goes to the message thread he has with Marc-Andre, the last one weeks old, from during the expansion draft. Matt had sent him: _They’re lucky they’re getting you you’ll help make them into a team_ and it had gone unanswered.

Matt looks up, traces the lines of paint on the ceiling, focuses on a patch that’s starting to bubble, right over the entrance to the showers -- probably poorly ventilated steam leaking moisture behind the paint, beads of water now straining against the latex of the paint trying to push themselves free --

He blinks, the light in front of him cutting in and out as Conor leans over to wave his hand in front of his face. Matt blinks, looks over at him.

“Don’t do that,” Conor says, like it’s that simple. “It’s just a text message. Ask him if he’s feeling OK, asking him how training camp is going, ask him if he’s completely unpacked yet, just ask him something. Get him talking.”

Matt looks back at the screen and types out _Are they making you talk to a bond therapist as well? Loads of fun would definitely recommend_ and sends it before he can second guess himself. Immediately follows it up with: _shears says I should ask you if you’re OK, but i’m pretty sure you’d lie so_ and hits send again.

Regrets both messages almost immediately, something cold and heavy settling into his stomach almost making him queasy.

“That was a terrible idea,” he says, mostly to Conor even if he can’t bring himself to do anything other than toss his phone into his open bag and sag against his cubby.

“Nah buddy,” Conor says, sliding over and bumping shoulders with him. “You two need to talk about this.”

“What if he doesn’t respond,” Matt says, exasperated. “He doesn’t owe me anything, least of all responses to some awkward texts I sent him about something that may not even be affecting him at all.”

“I don’t know if you had any in your high school, but,” Conor says. “Me and Jordan, there was a couple -- she was in orchestra, I think she was trying to be a concert cellist or something, I don’t know, we were friends with her boyfriend -- Zach. Zach and Angela were a couple, but they were also guide-bonded, she was a sentinel. They broke up, it wasn’t amicable -- they wanted to break the bond. Angela had zone outs, sure, it was kind of dramatic, but she recovered in a few weeks. Zach --”

Conor pauses, and Matt looks over, watches his friend work to find the right words.

“Zach was fine,” Conor explains. “In the end, Zach was fine. But for a long time, Zach wasn’t fine at all. And just because he didn’t have absent seizures in the middle of the damn caffettiera, everyone thought he was doing a-OK. Even us, even his friends, thought he was coping well.”

Matt can tell it’s an old regret, but a deep-running one -- Conor’s a good guy. An asshole, sometimes, but not the kind of person to shy away from a complicated situation just because of the difficulty of getting involved.

“He may not answer,” Conor says, shrugging. Slaps Matt’s thigh, and grins when Matt jumps. “But it’s better to ask.”

Matt tries to snap Conor with the first towel he can grab, but Conor dances out of his reach too quickly for the impact to make an impression.

“No lasagna for you on Saturday,” Matt calls after him as Shears disappears into the showers. 

“I’ll cry,” he shouts back. “Full on ugly crying, Christina will order some in just to get me to stop.”

“Dick,” Matt mutters, mostly to himself.

There’s a twitchy urge to rummage back through his belongings to check his phone to see if he’s gotten any new messages, but he squashes it as best as he can. Matt tackles the buckles of his leg pads, and keeps thinking _it’s better to ask_ to himself when his stomach starts swooping again, when he can feel a nervous sweat ticking between his shoulder blades and in the crook of his elbows.

Besides, Matt has to admit that if radio silence is rock bottom, there’s only one direction for his relationship with Marc-Andre to go at this point. It’s hardly a comfort, but it’s enough keep Matt’s hands moving and Matt’s mind clear.

\--

Marc-Andre texts back later that night -- different time zones Matt reminds himself as they come in time-stamped at 1am, not necessarily avoiding conversation, but.

 _haha yes they are but its not so bad, preseason super busy anyway tell Sheary hello and that I hope his backhand is still shit_ plus a winky-face emoji as punctuation. Not necessarily avoiding conversation but not inviting it, and the man has plenty of family in Quebec -- Matt hardly doubts the choice of 1am was thoughtless.

He places the phone down softly on the bedside table without replying, switches it back to silent, and plugs it in.

It takes a while for Matt to fall asleep.

\--

Matt dreams he’s at a dinner, but it’s a press conference. Three broad dining tables are lined up in a horizontal stage, the walls behind him draped in a lime green, long chandeliers that look like fishbones with candles on either side are hanging from the ceiling -- he knows this place.

It startles Matt from his plate -- a giant rib-eye with dandelion flowers where he’s sure potatoes should be. Along the green drapery are mounted heads -- a bear, a five-point buck, a goose, and one blank, just a plain wood backing with a brass name plate. It’s a number that’s on the plate, but he can’t quite see it from where he’s sitting --

“Matt --”

“Mr. Murray, a question --”

“Matt, can we have a second --”

Matt turns around and faces the overwhelming glare of a iPhone recording light. He can’t see faces, but he knows they’re there, knows the sound of the crush of bodies at a press conference, knows what this is.

“Yeah, sure,” he finds himself saying, chewing his way through some gristle. Matt’s hesitant to put down his fork and knife, but isn’t entirely sure why.

“What do you have to say to the accusation that you haven’t really contributed much to the team’s overall off-season performance despite backstopping them into the finals of the cup?”

He can’t remember playing. He’s not sure which cup they’re talking about. He looks around, but everyone else at the table with him is faced away and he’s not sure who’s next to him. He cuts another piece of steak, scoops up a flower on his fork as well before lifting it to his mouth and biting down.

“We win as a team, we lose as a team,” Matt replies with his mouth full.

“Do you really think nobody’s noticed you stole those cup victories out from under him?”

“From under who?” Matt asks, swallowing.

There’s laughter from the crowd, and Matt grins -- pleased he’s made a joke. He bends to cut into the steak again, when the person next to him knocks their knee into his. Matt looks up, and it’s Marc-Andre. His plate is clean except for three rings that have morsels of meat still clinging to them. Marc-Andre looks pained as Matt lifts his fork to his mouth to eat more food.

“Which person would you say you’re closest to on the team, Matt?”

Matt smiles, and turns away from Marc-Andre even as he shifts his leg to return to the contact under the table. The impact is wooden, heavy, cool on the line of Matt’s leg, and he’s about to look to see what he hit when he remembers he’s answering a question.

“Probably Fleury, he’s been a good friend,” Matt says.

“Which person,” the reporter clarifies. “Flowers don’t count.”

Matt blinks. Everyone in the room turns to him, including his teammates at the table, and says loud enough ensemble for Matt’s ears to hurt: “Flowers don’t count.”

Matt turns to look at Marc-Andre, but there’s a bouquet of wildflowers on the lap of a featureless mannequin wearing Marc-Andre’s jersey which is sat in Marc-Andre’s chair, featureless face turned to look at Matt.

“No,” Matt tries to say -- thinks _that’s not true_ but can’t voice any of that around all the meat and dandelions in his mouth, and begins to cough, to choke.

He coughs himself awake, Christina drowsily petting his back and already awake beside him. There’s a piece of -- of whatever greens she’d made with dinner, tickling the back of his throat. He swats around with his hand until he grabs the bottle of water on the bedside and gulps half of it down so quickly he almost chokes on the water going down the wrong pipe.

“Sorry,” Matt says, once he can talk.

He looks at Christina who’s still half-asleep, tracing circles into his back with hands that have been out from under the covers long enough that they’re cold. He shivers, slightly, feels the goosebumps prickle up from under his skin. He remembers she’s leaving to head back to Canada today, with the semester starting next week. He rolls to check the time -- just past 4 am.

“Sorry,” he says again. “Go back to sleep.”

“Bad dream?” she mumbles against his back, even as she bear hugs herself around him and tucks her forehead against his shoulders.

“I can’t remember,” he sighs, shutting his eyes, and it’s even mostly the truth.

 

\--

Matt’s informed that the sessions with Dr. Mansour are going to be every two weeks starting the week before their first preseason game pretty much the day of his first scheduled session which is _fantastic_. He’s also told he’ll be expected to do them at PPG Paints, which -- there are pros and cons to that, Matt’ll allow, but mostly the whole thing makes him feel twitchy and exposed.

Nobody is really staring at him when he leaves the room after stretches and manual manip, although Matt feels like it’s noticeable; goalies are creatures of habit and routine is something he’s knows he personally clings to at the best of times. He’d gotten half of his pads on before remembering his obligation to meet with Mansour before practice today, so he’s waddling down the hallway, his head tucked down and earbuds in -- podcasts tend to work the best, almost works like conversation he doesn’t feel guilty for not fully listening to, but with music his mind can wander. It’s not a risk he’s willing to take at the moment.

He’s not entirely sure what he’s listening to as he walks down the hallway, but it’s an interview, and he allows himself to listen for a second just in time to catch -- “ _\- have to learn to tolerate ambiguity better, and I’m still terrible at it. I still hate it: even the word ambiguity makes sick to my stomach._ ” Matt’s in front of Conference Room C, completely avoiding going inside, and he pauses to stop and look at his player for a minute just so he can remember to actually listen to this episode of NPR when he isn’t just trying to distract himself.

Matt pulls his earbuds out, takes a deep breath, and opens the door. Dr. Mansour looks just as twitchy as he remembers from Ontario. This is one of the smaller rooms, more personable than business oriented, and apparent from a small teleconferencing set-up in the corner, it’s a small four-person table that Mansour is sitting on one side of, and the doctor remains seated while waving for Matt to take a seat.

“Before you ask, these are only meant to run 30 minutes unless we’re doing testing,” he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I aim to stick to that time limit to try and keep things as streamlined as possible for you.”

“OK,” Matt says since other man seems to be looking for a vocalized response.

Dr. Mansour nods, “So, and I hope you don’t mind me getting right to it -- have you zoned out since we were introduced over the summer?”

“Yeah, of course,” Matt says. “But that’s not really abnormal.”

“No problem,” Mansour says. “Let’s use this session to get a better idea of your baseline then. About how episodes a week would you say you have, and are you aware of any specific triggers?”

Matt’s pretty sure he wrote all of this down on the intake paperwork they gave him after the Ontario session, but begins to answer as honestly as he’s comfortable doing. As much as he doesn’t want to be doing these sessions, he needs to pass whatever evaluation they comprise so that management will stop considering him a liability. Matt’s willing to do quite a bit to get that go as quickly and smoothly as possible, even talking to a sensory shrink.

He only checks the clock three times during the session. Matt decides to consider it a win that he’s able to calmly walk out of the conference room and back to the locker room without running to any of his teammates. Once he’s back in the room, he’s assaulted with a wall of noise and nerves and sweat and the kind of giddiness that accompanies the preseason and makes every single one of them feel like they’re still 12 and playing for the pure love of the game.

It’s beyond easy to let that combination pull Matt’s mind away from any lingering anxieties.

\--

They obliterate Buffalo, which isn’t entirely as satisfying as it should be. Matt thinks it’s partly because it’s the preseason but mostly he’s preoccupied. He and Shears and Rusty, along with Jordan and Christina, are out drinking because they have a two day break until a Saturday game against Columbus nobody’s particularly looking forward to. Christina and Jordan both have no Thursday or Friday classes this semester, so they’re in Pittsburgh for a long weekend visiting, and it’s nice.

It should be nice. Matt should be focusing on the fact that he’s here, Olive or Twist is abnormally empty, and the couch he’s been in the process of melting into actually feels blissfully buttery under his palms and exposed neck. Conor somehow convinced the bartender to give them their bottle, which is kind of amusing because this is not even remotely that kind of place, but it sure makes drinking more whisky a lot easier. Rusty’s is curled into an easy chair at the end of their table texting away with a soft expression on his face that means it’s probably Kelsey sending him Snaps of their dog, and on the speakers someone he should probably know singing _since I’ve come on home my body’s been a mess_ \-- Jordan and Christina are laughing and half dancing by the fireplace.

Matt _wants_ to be focusing on being here, but. The end of the second period, already up by three, there had been a moment -- he’d looked over as the ref had blown the whistle, the bin door opening and boos starting to ripen in the stands as Horny had been unceremoniously marched over to sit for a two-minute high stick, and against the glass there had been two rows of people chanting in unison, he was able to see their lips all moving together, and he’d known, he’d known if he’d just concentrated a little more he could hear them saying --

“-- blind, I’m deaf, I wanna be a ref! A rope, a tree, hang the referee! The ref, the ref, the ref is out to lunch --”  
\-- the puck, like a gunshot against the glass soaring wide of the goal, is what it wound up taking to knock Matt back into the game. He’d wound up spending the rest of the game in a cold sweat.

It’s something that a day later he can’t help but keep running through his mind. Matt’s not sure what it means; he hadn’t been anxious, he hadn’t been upset.

Shears leans on him, invading his space to pour Matt another whisky. The sensation of Conor leaning over him for things is turning several shades more familiar as of late, and Matt feels like he should probably have feelings about that. Or maybe just a talk, since he thought Conor knew touch is the worst out of everything for him, but everything else in his life has been emotionally tumultuous to a point that familiar, however handsy, is more welcome than anything else. 

“That’s enough,” Matt says, pushing the neck of the bottle up and away from his glass, getting a squawk out of Conor as some of the Sazerac spills.

“Party foul,” Conor chides. “C’mon Muzz, you gotta hold up your end of the drinking now that Rusty’s fallen down a social media black hole.”

From his seat, Brian flips them both the bird without looking up. Conor laughs, the entire side of him pressing into Matt in a long line of heat and movement, and it’s a _lot_ , suddenly. Matt doesn’t know what to do with himself, knows he must be radiating tension. Conor doesn’t move, but stops squirming which helps, drags his glass to the edge of the table so he can reup himself.

Matt watches the liquid spill into the tumbler, the remains of the squealing and then popping open with cracks unable to tolerate the temperature. Conor moves again, wrapping his arm casually around the back of the couch and behind Matt’s head, and it pulls Matt back out of his hearing. Matt looks at Conor, who is studying their girlfriends moving together. He’s -- it’s possible Matt’s imagining too much intention in Conor’s constant touching. It could just be ludicrously serendipitous, it could just be how Conor is with other people who he knows well, but Conor clears that right up by talking and making the first words out of his mouth:

“So how’s the sensory therapy going?”

“It’s fine,” Matt says, and then without pausing continues. “You don’t have to do that.”

“What am I doing?” Conor asks, visibly amused.

“I don’t remember the word from the high school class on this shit, but -- touching me if you think I’m going to zone out.”

“Tethering,” Conor says, and takes a sip. “And it’s no big deal. If it means you can relax a little more when you’re out.”

Matt’s suddenly really unsure how to explain his issue with it. He picks up his own glass of whisky, twirls it in his hands watching the low lamplight disperse through the grooves in the crystal. “You asked how therapy was going, we’re working on self-isolation protocols.”

“Self-isolation fortifications aren’t nearly as effective as a guide bond,” Conor says, frowning.

“Maybe not, but at least they’re something,” Matt says and squints. “You’re also incredibly well informed for someone not in a bond.”

“I told you,” Conor says, voice mild. “I had a friend.”

“Right,” Matt says.

Conor doesn’t say anything, but continues to sit all over Matt and act preoccupied by Christina and Jordan. Matt turns to watch them as well, realizing he’s still not actually going to tell Conor to leave him alone. The music has turned into some sort of indy folk bluegrass crooning, and the two women are slow dancing with each other, Jordan’s face buried in the fall of Christina’s dark hair.

“I didn’t need a guide in Wilkes-Barre or the Soo, so I think the doc and I are hoping that self-isolation will be enough,” Matt finds himself explaining. “At least, until the emotional sensitivity and shallow induction sensory episodes stop.”

Conor hums. “You were doing that shit during camp, weren’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” Matt says. “I was being pretty clumsy about it so my play was affected more than it should’ve been, but. Yeah.”

“You think you can do that and play how you need to? Up here in the show?” Conor asks, and Matt bristles because fuck him anyway, isn’t that the crux of the damn problem?

“I had better be able to, eh,” Matt says, hearing the anger in his voice. “Or I’m fucked.”

“If you want,” Conor says, either oblivious to or ignoring Matt’s irritation. “I’d be chill with seeing if we’re guide-bond compatible. But only if you want.”

Matt has no idea what to do with that information. Really, he’d thought about maybe actually hiring a professional guide if it came down to it since Christina wasn’t able to guide-bond. She’d initially been his first choice when Mansour brought up the same point -- that the inevitable conclusion of all of this was probably repairing, not trying to hack it on his own bondless. Although, Mansour had pointed out to Matt that having a bonded teammate added a very beneficial level of security during high-pressure games in case of on-ice zone outs. What Conor is offering is -- it’s an intimate offer. No matter how you look at it, because there are times Matt needs competing input to pull him back out of his senses, and touch is his worst offender. Matt blushes thinking of just how that’s been handled in the past, tries to latch onto something, anything to clear his mind of the memories.

Jordan laughs, and it carries despite the music -- there are only five other people save the bartender in here, so it’s not loud the way it can sometimes be. She’s still leaning into Christina, and the way her face is angled, Matt bets she can smell the rosemary of Christina’s shampoo. Almost wants to see if he can, but doesn’t want to know what Conor will do to bring him back to the present.

The thing nobody tells you, of course, is that surrounding yourself entirely with the input from one particular sense is overwhelming in a way that’s kind of gratifying. It’s not always this scary, bad thing, although you need to be safe when doing it. Matt imagines it’s like being an astronaut on a space walk, completely surrounded by a heavy oblivion and an expanse too awesome to truly quantify. He’d explained that to Christina early on, so she knows -- he’d had to explain it to Marc-Andre, who hadn’t entirely understood why it was so hard to pull him away from a zone out sometimes.

Matt’s suddenly struck with the conviction that Conor probably wouldn’t find knowing Matt likes a part of zoning out all that alarming.

“I appreciate the offer,” Matt says after a while, focusing on all the parts where and Conor are touching. _But I’ll be fine, thanks_ he can’t make himself finish, and instead pours Conor another drink from the dwindling bottle on the table.

\--

Preseason comes and goes, and Matt’s fine, he can do this, it’s not hard, he can do this -- and their first away game against Chicago, in a sea of red jerseys and odd acoustics and alien ice, he gets stuck listening to the way the blades of Toews’ skates cut the surface of the rink as he strides down the ice on a puck dump back into his own defensive zone. Matt wakes up with Panerin’s knees in his stomach and his his head bouncing off the post, the Pens down 7-1.

Everything is not fine, and he can’t do this.

\--

“Focus on the image of a flat circle.”

“I am focusing,” Matt says in a remarkably calm tone of voice. “It’s just not doing anything.”

“Of the three types,” Dr. Mansour says while pushing his chair back, some of his patience visibly ebbing away. “Competitive input recovery is absurdly effective, it’s just also the hardest to do for yourself.”

Matt has to make himself count to ten. The doctor isn’t telling him anything he didn’t know, and getting angrier won’t help his focus.

“So unless you’ve had a change of heart about trying to pair with another guide --”

“Nope,” Matt cuts him off. “And besides, I’m still bonded to Fleury.”

“It’s been five months since you’ve been in a room together, it’s highly unlikely that -- ” Dr. Mansour says, before he rounds on Matt and switches trains of thought. “Wait, how do you _know_ you’re still bonded to Fleury?”

The question seems almost absurd to Matt. “What do you mean, how do I know? I -- he’s there. He’s in my head.”

The doctor just stares at him. Matt shrugs, not sure how else to explain it. He lets himself feel that part of his awareness, and it curls under his gentle probing like an irritated cat. It’s not anything crazy like telepathy, but he catches it watching him sometimes and gets very Marc-Andre-like impressions from the way it tends to be both irritated and amused in its watchfulness. If he weren’t aware of it being a byproduct of his bond, it’d almost be like the feeling he gets sometimes when he’s sure someone else is in a room with him or walking down the street behind him, but he can’t see or hear anything that actually verifies that as fact. The ghost of someone having been there recently.

Matt’s been waiting for it to go away. It’s not going away, despite his efforts to not deliberately poke it like he’s just done from his end of things. He does his best to explain that to the doctor.

“That’s not normal,” Dr. Mansour says immediately once Matt finishes.

“Right,” Matt says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because you have so much first-hand experience.”

“Please,” Dr. Mansour fires right back. “I’m not a sensory sentinel and I’ve never been a guide, but I’ve personally worked with and counseled over 3,500 cases, someone would’ve mentioned having what amounts to some sort of empathic bond by now if it were _common_ , Matt.”

“Look, whatever, you asked,” Matt throws up his hands. “That’s how I know it’s not broken. It’s been there since we bonded.”

“Tests,” the doctor says, after a few seconds. “I need to order you some tests. We’ll skip next session so you can get them done, and we’ll meet once I have the results.”

“Awesome,” Matt says, rubbing his hands over his face.

He’s so sick of none of this helping even though it’s supposed to, even though he’s trying.

“We’re done for today, make sure Judy has your best contact number before you head back to the locker room, please.”

“Great,” Matt says, stands up, and leaves, barely managing to not slam the door behind him. 

He doesn’t stop by Judy’s office to make sure Mansour has his best contact number, he has hockey to goddamn play.

\--

Matt tries to call Marc-Andre. He gets his voicemail. Matt tries again, two more times, tries different times of day, makes sure he shouldn’t be in practice or at a game. The last time he calls, he feels a tension crack across the line and becomes Marc-Andre will actually pick up.

Matt gets sent to voicemail, Vero’s voice cheerfully announcing her husband’s unavailability first in French, then in English. He isn’t sure he’ll actually leave Marc-Andre a voice message until he starts to speak.

“They’re worried something’s wrong with our bond, that it’s some kind of outlier,” Matt says. “Because I can still feel you. I’m guessing you can still feel me too. I think my doctor may want to talk to you, but that’s your choice, man. Please just. Call me back, it’d be nice to catch up. You guys are really lighting up the Pacific.”

Matt hangs up once he runs out of things to say.

\--

It’s not a game night. They’ve all just tumbled home after an away stretch, and honestly Matt would rather be at home since this is one of the weekends Christina is staying up in Ontario, but he’s out with Sheary and Rust, and they’re drinking, because while it may not be game night, it is a Friday.

Rusty picked the place, and he’s partial to upscale sports bars, so it’s both loud as shit and expensive. They have a small circular booth in front of the array of flat screen tvs on one of the walls, and the Knights playing the Red Wings is on because of course it is. Matt has to stop himself from giggling in a moment of sheer and genuine panic as he realises his ability to avoid his inability to communicate with Marc-Andre is rapidly spiraling out of his control. He manages to smother his urge to laugh into the beer Shears hands him with a capital-L Look more or less successfully, and thinks he’s doing good -- whatever bullshit craft beer Brian’s convinced them all to drink dropping an absolute bomb of a hoppy aroma into his face, the umami of the malt settling in deep as he inhales, the slight sharpness of the carbonation wafting up as it breaks the surface, the actual smell of coldness -- Matt getting caught on its hook even as his vision dimms and his grip weakens.

The smell of cold -- Matt knows it’s not just the cold, it’s cold water. The way water changes its scent depending on temperature isn’t something he imagines he could ever convince someone who can’t experience it of being true. Ice smells differently, too. Mostly cold water, but kind dense, blunter, drastically less delicate. He can smell so much ice, and as he does, he hears Marc-Andre think _mauvais endroit au crisse de mauvais moment tabarnak_

Matt opens his eyes to an almost silent bar -- every person eyes on the screen because Marc-Andre is on the ice and he isn’t moving.

“Fuck,” Brian mutters as they start the replay again, and Matt thinks _oh_ with startling clarity watching Mantha’s knee slam into the other goalie’s head.

Eventually they stop looping the replay on NBC, and the feed switches to a shaky but awake Marc-Andre Fleury getting back to his feet, and because this is Pittsburgh and Fleury will always be theirs, there’s cheering and clapping from the bar as noise levels return to something approach the normal din.

Conor leans in to talk right into Matt’s ear and asks: “Are you OK?”

Matt feels around for the ghost riding shotgun in his periphery and finds it missing.

“I’m not sure,” Matt says while shrugging and looking at Connor because he’s not.

Connor frowns.

\--

Three days later, Matt reads that Marc-Andre is out IR for his third recorded concussion.

Matt dreams again, knows he does because it’s all there when he wakes up startled, but the dreams slip away before he can pull shapes and half-memories back out of them. It starts happening so often that he picks up a bottle of Benadryl from the CVS on the way home from the arena because he’s getting headaches when he gets up in the morning.

\--  
Matt opens his eyes, and asks, “How long?”

Dr. Mansour is across from him, glasses on the table, and before the doctor can even answer him, Matt can tell the light is low enough outside for the answer to be one he doesn’t want to get.

“Jesus,” Matt mutters to himself, even as the doctor proclaims, “Twenty-two minutes and fifteen seconds.”

Matt is quiet for a long time. Dr. Mansour just looks at him from across the table, not giving Matt an inch or an out.

“It’s getting worse,” Dr. Mansour says, and it’s not a question. “We have your baseline ImPACT and EEG from when you were called up and the first ones from after the bond. I have your new ones. I’m just waiting for Fleury’s, we’ve sent the request off to legal.”

“What then?” Matt asks.

“Answers,” Dr. Mansour says. “Hopefully.”

Matt shifts uncomfortably in the wooden chair, trying not to let bile climb up his throat. “It’s only the deep induction episodes that are running that long. The shallow ones --”

“-- aren’t as bad, but you can’t pull yourself back within five minutes, and the league’s rule says you have to be able to snap out of an episode in 90 seconds or less.”

“I know the rule,” Matt says, but he’s not angry, not anymore.

“You need to try to bond with another guide, Matt,” Dr. Mansour says, sitting forwards. “You need to try, or I have to recommend you be put onto IR. I know our sessions are usually two weeks apart, but I’m going to need to see you weekly until further notice.”

Matt nods because he doesn’t know what to say.

\--

Matt tries to call Marc-Andre again, and Vero picks up.

“Hello Matt,” she says, and something in her tone makes Matt regret a lot of things, including this phone call.

“I -- uh, could I speak to Marc-Andre?”

“He’s not available,” she says, voice affable in a way that makes Matt want to curl up. “How can I help you, though?”

“I’m having some trouble,” Matt tries to explain. “Breaking our old bond, and figuring that out is on me, I know that, but I can’t imagine it’s easy on him either, and I was thinking if we talked it out, maybe we could both be done with this quicker.”

“Ah,” Vero says. “Well, I’m certainly sorry to hear you’ve been struggling Matt. Please know both I and Marc-Andre are wishing you luck finding a new guide, I mean this very sincerely. But with that said _mon petit_ , you must realize Marc-Andre doesn’t owe you help. And, perhaps more importantly, doesn’t owe you an opportunity to help him.”

“I know he doesn’t owe me the emotional labor, I’m not trying to be --” Matt struggles. “I just thought -- I wanted to know how he was doing because I thought we were friends. Because I care about him feeling well.”

“Oh,” Vero doesn’t laugh, exactly. But there’s a sound that gets caught in her throat, that she can’t quite stop, and god, but Matt is mortified. He never should’ve called. “He is a good mentor, my husband. He cares because he thinks anything other than a wholehearted approach would make him less than professional.”

“He’s a good man,” Matt says, and tries to figure out how to end the call without simply hanging up on Veronique Fleury.

Matt’s never felt so wrong-footed about something in his life.

\--

“So,” Matt says, standing behind Conor, watching him jump a little as he turns, tugging his towel across his hips a little tighter.

“So… what,” Conor fills in.

Matt crosses his arms across his chest. He’s already dressed in his sweatpants and hoodie, it’s possible he should’ve waited until Conor was done showering, but he’s already started to fucking talk, and in for a half, in for a whole, right? Shit.

“You aren’t just offering to be my guide because it’s good for the team, right,” Matt gets out, blustering on when Conor tries to interject. “Because I can appreciate wanting to be a good teammate, I really can, but this isn’t something you do just because you want to be a good teammate.”

Not if you aren’t a crazy asshole from Sorel-Tracy with more heart than sense, anyway, Matt thinks viciously. Conor just raises an eyebrow.

“How long have we known each other, Matty?” Conor asks.

Matt starts to answer him, but Conor stops him with a hand on his chest.

“Rhetorical question my dude,” he says rolling his eyes. “I’d do it for you even if I played for the Flyers. I’d do it for you because you’re my friend, and because it feels good to help friends.”

Matt looks at him, slides his fingers around the wrist of the hand Conor’s got on his chest. “Then we need to talk about how this works.”

“Let me shower first, OK?” Conor asks, and Matt nods.

When Conor is done, they spend a long time out in the parking lot in Matt’s running car talking over the particulars. That Matt’s responsive to competitive stimuli in emergencies or if he’s really far under, but that Marc-Andre tried to create buffer by systematically inducing zone outs and pulling Matt right back out of it that Matt’s body became so used to Marc-Andre generating a more dominant stim, Matt started to focus on Marc-Andre before dropping entirely which helped the few and far between times Matt struggled on ice during a game.

“That’s actually pretty clever,” Conor comments, having been mostly quiet for some time now. “I’m surprised not more people do that.”

“He said he picked the idea up from juniors, two of his teammates were bonded back when he was in the Q, and that was the quick and dirty way they figured prevented zone outs on the ice,” Matt shrugs.

Conor hums, and scratches the back of his head where his hair is still damp. Matt watches his face for any signs of discomfort but finds none.

“You sure you’re cool signing up for this shit?” Matt asks again.

“Pssh,” Conor snorts, and grabs Matt, drags him half over the center console just to give him a goddamn noogie. “You’re gonna be sick of my ass before I get sick of yours, you fucking stork.”

Matt fights him off, grinning, a little less anxious than he’s been in about half a year.

\--

They work on it all week. It’s good, Matt feels his body acclimatizing to Conor’s voice, to Conor’s smell and touch, the way he’s only ever been tuned into Christina’s and. Well. Marc-Andre’s. If Conor’s there, Matt feels himself gravitating towards an awareness of Conor before slipping fully into one of his senses. They do a couple of dry runs with just the two of them on the ice, and while it’s not so smooth that Matt’s recovering in less than a few heartbeats, it’s pretty damn close to the 90 second marker. 

Matt feels confident that they’ve laid enough groundwork to tackle a live game with Matt playing at full concentration, and Conor’s fine giving it a shot. It’s a Tuesday home game against Edmonton. It’ll be fine.

If Matt’s a little more jittery than he should be waiting for the national anthems to play, he tells himself it’s because he has the good sense to be anticipatory when Connor McDavid is about to get on the ice. He rolls his shoulders, shifts his weight, and tells himself repeatedly, fiercely, that he can do this.

Period one goes fine.

Period two goes fine, although there’s mounting tension because nobody’s goddamn scoring and their neutral ice play has been a shitshow all night.

Period three -- Cole buries one off a sauce from Reaves, and the fans almost yell down the rafters. Matt settles in with the sort of clarity he appreciates in his job; he now has one very specific task, and that’s to not let this damn get to goddamn overtime. He’s good at his job. He lets his eyes slip between the way they’re staging to slide past the blue line and the puck, and stops everything Edmonton can come with. He even gets taps from the boys and a hug from Conor who’s on shift after an absolutely stupid reactionary save he can’t believe he pulled off. Matt’s giddy with it, the freedom to fucking _play_. He’s giddy, and not only forgets to be cautious -- he has no real desire to be.

It’s dumb, it’s a bar down rebound, but the sound of the puck off the post is so _loud_ , Matt’s blinking and listening for soft French swearing that never comes. The ringing intensifies, into something almost beautiful like a bird warbling or a siren wail and --

McDavid scores, and shouts in Matt’s face, raw with the relief of it. Matt blinks, notices the clock reads two minutes and change left in the period instead of twelve. Matt looks at the bench helplessly, where Conor looks absolutely crestfallen, like _he’s_ fucked up, and Matt hates that. Hates that, because this isn’t Conor’s fault --

“Hey, Matt,” and that’s Sid, and Matt can’t stop himself from wincing and cracking his paddle against the post because _fuck_. “Hey, buddy, hold up on that, c’mere a second.”

Matt lets Sid pull him aside, the refs seem to be giving them enough space on the reset.

“You need to fix this,” Sid says, like it’s matter of fact, and Matt supposes it is, for him. “Not just because you need to be playing better, but because if you don’t fix this, you’ll get hurt. We can only do so much to take hits for you.”

“Hits?” Matt parrots back at him, and Sid nods and gestures at Klefbom who’s cellying still over by the Oilers bench.

“Yeah bud,” Sid says, lipping at his mouthguard. “That asshole almost bulldozed you, if it weren’t for Schultzy, you’d’ve been fucked.”

Matt genuinely feels like crying. He hasn’t felt this incapable, this out of control since he was in grade school and realizing he wasn’t like most other kids. 

“I’m trying, I’m fucking trying,” Matt gets out around the lump in his throat. “But Flower won’t talk to me. Something is wrong, and nothing is working, and I don’t know how to fix this alone.”

Sid chews his mouthguard some more, nods, and finally says, “OK. OK, if that’s what it’ll take, then OK.”

Thank god they win in overtime. Thank _God_. Conor tries to catch Matt on his way out of the locker room, but Matt is careful and times his exit right. It’s running away, but Matt can’t bear to do anything else right now.

\--

The next session with Mansour goes very differently.

He’s got a dearth of ImpACT tests and EEG results printed out and in haphazard piles in front of him on the table next Matt’s own medical file and what looks like a copy of Marc-Andre’s. The doctor himself looks pissed off and harried instead of his usual impatient or anxious self.

He waits until Matt’s fully seated before talking in a clipped tone. “You could’ve told me you all created a bond while Fleury was concussed.”

Matt blinks. “It didn’t occur to me to tell you --”

“A metaphysical neurological bond exists between your two brains, and it _didn’t occur to you_ to tell me one of you had a TBI at the time it was formed?” Dr. Mansour says, voice rising sharply at the end of his sentence.

“How does his having a concussion then screw up my brain’s ability to bond now?” Matt asks. “If it had been me with the concussion, I obviously would’ve told you immediately --”

“Have you ever had to format a drive,” Mansour interrupts, speaking slowly. “Because corrupt data was written onto it? It’s not just that you can’t delete those files or that you can’t open them, but the entire drive reads as invalid until it’s been formated. Kicker is, sometimes the data reads as corrupt on other devices, but if you put the drive back into the computer it was original paired with, the data can be read just fine. I never really understood why that happened, but the principle is essentially the same here.”

“So can we just do that?” Matt asks, feeling totally lost. “Format my head?”

Mansour laughs, a little hysterically. “I mean, five years ago we weren’t even acknowledging that sentinels were real and that bonds were a tangible, documentable thing. Are we doing research into external manipulation of bonds? Sure -- but like, nothing that isn’t unproven and highly experimental.”

Matt doesn’t even try to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be amenable to the idea of finding a new field of work?”

“If that’s a joke,” Matt says. “It’s a fucking bad one.”

Mansour shrugs elaborately, looking frazzled. “If Fleury agrees to do partnered sessions while still nursing his present concussion, we can try to do some guided damage control. But he’s not legally obliged to do so -- especially since I can’t imagine he’s feeling up to elaborate mental gymnastics at the moment.”

“I’ll ask him,” Matt says, remembering the sound of Sid’s voice, the promise of _if that’s what it takes_.

“Good luck,” Mansour says, and Matt has to look away from pity he sees in the other man’s face.

\--

Marc-Andre shows up a week later, wearing the same half-amused smile Matt remembers being on his face the first time he met the man. He also has James Neal in tow for some reason Matt absolutely cannot fathom, and of course, the first Matt knows about any of it is when he pulls up after practice and sees the two of them outside his damn house.

He parks on the street since the rental SUV Neal apparently drove them here in is occupying most of his driveway. As he approaches, they get out of the still-running car -- it’s been mild, but a brisk chill has settled in the last two days and being by the river makes it worse. Matt thinks to ask how long they’ve been waiting there, but can’t understand the point of asking the longer he thinks about doing so, and the other question -- _Why aren’t you at a hotel?_ \-- seems rude despite them being the unannounced guests.

“Why the hell,” he starts, eyeing Nealer. “are you here?”

He doesn’t really know James Neal, and it seems easier questioning his presence instead of figuring out a way to say two words to Marc-Andre now that he’s actually present and inescapable. It’s already a lot standing six feet away from him and avoiding eye contact, Marc-Andre’s presence is just fucking loud. It always has been.

“I asked him not to come, but he didn’t listen to me,” Marc-Andre says, rolling his eyes.

“Guy can’t drive, he’s concussed,” Nealer shrugs. “Plus, y’know, moral support. It’s hard getting dropped on your ass by a team you think was going to keep you for life.”

“They’re letting you off as a healthy scratch for this?” Matt asks, trying to keep his voice under control as he unlocks the door to his place. “From what I understand, this whole mess could take a while.”

“Well, there are five of us,” and it takes Matt a minute to realize he means alternate captains. “We’ve worked out a rotating schedule for the next month. Gotta take care of our boy here.”

Matt offers to let them stay in his guest room, still half expecting them to decline and go for the hotel despite having come here straight from the airport. They thank him and accept the offer.

Matt must be making a face, because Marc-Andre grins, and explains shrugging. “Less chance for exposure, less media asking why Marc-Andre and James Neal are in Pittsburgh together right now.”

He has to concede the point as Nealer stomps past with their luggage in tow. Matt belatedly tries to duck as much out of his way as possible, figures asking the man not to break anything will come across more petty than genuinely concerned and leaves it alone.

“I can make dinner,” Matt offers after a minute of watching them and then feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Unless you’d rather eat out?”

“Is this like how you offered to let us stay with you and then looked immediately like someone shat in your shoes when we said yes?” Nealer asks.

Matt has never felt more unwelcome in his own home than he does right this second.

“Dinner sounds great Matty,” Marc-Andre says before Matt can muster up any kind of response to the acerbic hurricane that is James Neal, and Matt gratefully takes the out for what it is and goes to start work on the food.

\--

Dinner is almost entirely silent except for Nealer steadily glaring at Matt for most of the meal which speaks volumes as far as Matt’s concerned. Marc-Andre makes some attempt at polite conversation, asking after Christina and how she’s doing in school and his teammates -- as if Matt isn’t acutely aware that Marc-Andre already speaks to the ones he cares about on a fairly regular basis.

Matt begins to wonder if bringing him here was really the right decision.

Nealer speed eats, but clears his plate of the chicken cacciatore with a degree of thoroughness Matt choses to take as a complement to his cooking.

“I’m heading to bed,” Nealer declares practically as soon as he puts his fork down. “Thanks for the food.”

“You’re welcome,” Matt says, tracking Nealer as he makes his way to the kitchen sink and actually rinses off his plate before heading upstairs.

Marc-Andre cuts what’s left of a chicken breast methodically into smaller pieces as Matt watches him silently. He’s half sure he should leave it alone, since Matt is wholly convinced it’s enough that he’s here. It really is enough that he’s willing to try to help him, maybe both of them if Matt’s hunch is correct, but a part of his brain can’t help but peck at a fresh scab when it finds one, so apropos of nothing, Matt clears his throat as Marc-Andre chews his food, his eyes jumping up to meet Matt’s.

“What made you change your mind?” asks Matt. “About coming here, tackling this?”

“Sid asked,” Marc-Andre shrugs. “I try to help my friends, when I can.”

Matt had guessed, no -- Matt had known. He nods his head even as he has to physically bite his own tongue. Matt had known but hearing it still hurts more than Matt expects it to.

They don’t talk much after that except for Marc-Andre offering him thanks for the bed, meal, and wishing him a good night. Matt drags a smile out from somewhere and does the same.

It’s a long time before he can find the energy to put the dishwasher on and get ready for bed.

\--

Matt gets up in the middle of the night, but can’t for the life of him read the face of his digital alarm clock. He can hear snoring from down the hall, remembers that yes, he has guests. When he listens a little harder he can hear quite muttering. _On ne connaît que les choses que l'on apprivoise._ It’s not in English, Matt’s pretty sure, and it’s coming from outside.

Matt gets up out of bed and heads downstairs, walking softly and mostly from memory as he dedicates more and more of his resources to listening to the voice talking quietly. _Les hommes n'ont plus le temps de rien connaître. Ils achètent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands._

It’s in French, and it’s coming from the patio. Matt opens the sliding glass door and the screen, steps out in nothing but his flannel and woolen socks.

“ _Mais comme il n'existe point de marchands d'amis, les hommes n'ont plus d'amis. Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi,_ ” the man on the porch says as Matt steps outside.

“How do I do that?” Matt asks, unwilling to look across to see who he’s standing next to, afraid of dandelions and mannequins and trophy mounts yet to find their heads.

He can tell his companion is considering his answer. “ _Il faut être très patient. Tu t'assoiras d'abord un peu loin de moi, comme ça, dans l'herbe. Je te regarderai du coin de l'œil et tu ne diras rien. Le langage est source de malentendus. Mais, chaque jour, tu pourras t'asseoir un peu plus près._ ”

Matt closes his eyes and thinks it’s a shame he never really learned how to speak French after forgetting what little he was taught getting his high school certificate.

He opens them again to find himself in bed. He stretches and looks over at his digital clock, the time reading just before 7am. Matt listens closely, hears two people snoring, and is puzzled to find himself suddenly thinking of foxes.

\--

“In theory, this should be simple if labor intensive,” Dr. Mansour says, glancing from Marc-Andre, to Matt, to Conor who’s on the other side of the table next to the doctor himself. “It’s just a version of what you did to get him to subconsciously seek you out in the first place -- let Matt drop into a sensory input, and when he instinctively looks for Marc-Andre, Marc-Andre should stay quiet and Conor should redirect Matt by providing competitive input sourced by him.”

“If you alternate that with exercises involving just the two of you -- Matt, and Conor, my hope is we’ll be through the decoupling/recoupling cycle in two weeks.”

“I may not be able to do this every day, depending on my headaches and vertigo,” Marc-Andre says. “But when I can do it, I will.”

“Good,” Dr. Mansour says, nodding. “Do the three of you feel up to doing a handful of shallow induction runs now? I booked the space for a full two hours, and it’s not as if Matt’s got anywhere else to be for the time being.”

Matt had been greeted with that news coming in today -- after the game against the Oilers, he was unofficially benched and then put on the day-to-day injured listing once Matt had confirmed Marc-Andre had shown up with Sid. It’s infuriating, but Matt can’t be anything other than understanding about the decision.

“Yeah, sure thing,” says Conor. “It’s optional skate anyway.”

Matt nods, and looks at Marc-Andre. “You OK to do some stuff immediately.”

“Why not,” he shrugs. “It’s the whole reason I’m here, no?”

Matt starts slightly when Conor gets up and drags his chair to the other side of Matt, watches as Conor slides his hand over and touches Matt’s knee.

“We’ll get this,” Conor says, quietly. “I know we will.”

Matt ignores the fact that he can feel Marc-Andre watching them, and instead breathes, focuses, waits for the doctor to start fiddling with his glasses.

He does, of course, because he always does; so Matt does what he can, concentrates as hard as he’s able to, and trusts everything to drop away.

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: alcohol use, some discussion of consent surrounding Fleury's choice to become Murray's guide, which in this universe amounts to an intimate relationship and because of Matt's particular peculiarities (namely that touch is his biggest trigger), includes an implied encounters of at least a mildly sexual nature. The implication is a pan-flash, though, blink and you'll miss it.


End file.
